Breathtaking landscapes, ancient temples, relaxing islands, and coffee plantations, there is something for every traveler in Southern Laos. This region is full of beauty and natural wonders, undisturbed by the crowd.

Talk a walk through history. Stand in the presence Angkorian and Pre-Angkorian temples. Read ancient Khmer inscriptions that were preserved in a cave.
Or take it easy and visit the laid back island of Don Daeng. Depending on how active you feel, this trail can be taken by walking, cycling, or motorbike.

You can select from four trails to explore archaeological and nature themes.
And if local life and culture is your interest, there are four trails for these themes.

Pakse sits at the confluence of the Mekong and the Se Don river. The city retains the sort of Mekong River–town lethargy found in Savannakhet and Tha Khaek further north. Several colonial-era buildings remain, do look for the grandiose, Franco-Chinese-style Chinese Society building in the centre of town.

From the ancient Vat Phou temple, to the colonial mansions and the old Lao stilt houses, life seems pretty much the same as it was a century ago. A town situated between the Mekong river and the Phou Kao mountains, it was once a prosperous city of the Champasak Kingdom that formed one-third of Laos back in 1713.

The landscape of the Bolaven Plateau is characterized by coffee and tea plantations and dramatic waterfalls. An expanse of highland from an ancient volcano, the Bolaven Plateau is a haven for lush vegetation.

The Xe Pian National Protected Area (NPA), established in 1993 and covering an area of 2,400 square kilometres, is considered to be one of the top three most biologically important protected areas in Laos.

4000 Islands or Si Phan Don is a collection of islands in the Khong district of Champasak province near the Cambodian border. Only 33 islands are actually inhabited, while some of the smaller ones are submerged during the rainy season.

Situated in the Sekong river valley, sandwiched between Sekong province to the north, Champasak province to the west, Cambodia to the south, and Vietnam to the east, relaxed Attapue is considered as Southern Laos last frontier.

Sekong Province is one of the least explored provinces in Laos due to the rugged landscape and mountainous terrain that rises to the Dacheung Plateau. Known as the most ethically diverse province in Southern Laos, Sekong has 14 distinct ethnic groups belonging to the Mon-Khmer linguistic family.

Rugged and untouched, Salavan province is an explorer’s paradise. Breathe in the fresh air of the evergreen woodlands and rolling hills. Explore the spectacular waterfalls, such as Tad Lo, that cascade through the forests during the wet season. A southeastern province situated on the Bolaven Plateau is devoted to agriculture and nature offering idyllic scenery.

Check out this feature from The Guardian!

If the gibbons are watching, they are probably feeling a touch disdainful. For our primate cousins, this kind of treetop travel is a doddle. Equipped with nothing more than mobile wrists and a gung-ho disposition, gibbons are nature’s great arboreal acrobats, capable of travelling from branch to branch at great speed.

But for less nimble apes looking to emulate their swift passage through the jungle some assistance is needed, which is why I’m standing on a wooden platform in the gibbon’s treetop domain, fumbling with the ball-bearing pulley that is attached to my waist, skeptically twanging the taut wire above my head, and preparing to jump.

At first glance, Nong Louang might seem an unlikely launch pad for an aerial escapade. A postcard Laotian village of wood-slat houses surrounded by coffee plantations, an hour’s drive from the southern gateway town of Pakse, it is a portrait of rural entropy: men loll on rattan mats quaffing Beerlao; corroded signs advertising homestays hang above the dirt road, sullen monuments to a foreign footfall that, until recently, never materialised.

But against this backdrop of indolent Indochina, looking incongruous in bright yellow harnesses and orange helmets, adventure-hungry tourists have started coming to experience something thrilling. Each morning they gather for a safety briefing, before tramping east towards the jungles of Dong Hua Sao, a largely pristine national park that spills over the 1,300m-high rim of the Bolaven plateau in southern Laos. They walk for 10 minutes, until the trees converge and the gradient steepens. Suddenly there’s a green abyss before them, and the question of how to get down …

“Ziplines were the answer,” says Inthy Deuansavanh, founder of Green Discovery, Laos’s leading ecotourism company, and the driving force behind the Treetop Explorer, a cat’s cradle of galvanized steel wires that takes the phrase “jungle-gym” and turns it into a swashbuckling reality. Opened in 2011, after a rain-soaked year of survey expeditions and complex engineering, it has fast become a flagship destination on the falang road, luring travellers into a hinterland that was previously all but impenetrable.

“In the past it was impossible to fully experience Dong Hua Sao because there was no route down the escarpment,” Inthy says. “These wires have opened up paradise.”

Live like a Ewok in Jungle Hotel Paksong, Laos

Just 200m after my apprehensive flop on to the first line, I swoop down to the landing platform like a trainee ninja, already convinced that I have discovered the perfect way to travel through the jungle. An hour later and I have unleashed my inner apeman, and set him soaring on a series of ever-longer wires, all connected by short treks, abseils and canopy walkways.

With each traverse, the chorus of joyful whoops grows louder as our small group gains confidence. Soon we are all whizzing to and fro before the network’s spectacular showpiece: the Kamet Falls, a multi-tiered cascade that topples over the escarpment brim before plunging 120m into the river basin far below, fracturing the sunlight into arcing rainbows.

And this is just the way in, for there is one final zipline to negotiate at journey’s end. This is the one that takes you into your treehouse, which is just about as terrific as it sounds. Perched in the canopy like an Ewok village, Jungle Hotel Paksong is the Treetop Explorer’s hub: six open-sided treehouses containing basic but comfortable en suite bedrooms, each cradled in the coils of strangler fig trees up to 20m off the ground. For who wants the jungle floor, with its thorny underbrush, claustrophobic murkiness and – as our trek out of Nong Louang attested – blood-sucking leeches? Instead we have privacy, birdsong and unimpeded views over the surrounding trees.

Happily, the jungle’s hospitality is reciprocated by an underlying commitment to minimising the project’s impact on the surrounding ecology. Manager Boun Kounlavong says: “Our guests rely on the forest for their accommodation, but the forest is relying on us for its very survival.”

Every bit of this organic village, from the bed frames to the grass-thatched roofs, has been constructed from indigenous materials. Electricity is supplied by a waterfall-powered turbine, while the evening banquet we enjoy in the restaurant area at the base of the falls – fistfuls of sticky rice and marinated meats, eaten communally, straight from a banana leaf, and washed down with lao-lao, throat-shredding rice whisky – has all been sourced from the villages that dot the park’s periphery.

In 2000, the Laos government cited ecotourism as a keystone of its Millennium Development Goals – aimed at lifting the country out of the world’s 20 poorest by 2020. And projects like this one give cause for optimism. In a region where illegal poaching and tree felling are rife, the Treetop Explorer has brought sustainable jobs, and a portion of its profits is channelled into conservation. Baffling as our intrusion might be for the forest’s endangered yellow-cheeked gibbons – which are often spotted cavorting among the foliage that flanks the cataracts – they are benefiting, indirectly, from our presence.

At night, as I lie under my mosquito net immersed in the canopy’s insect thrum, I can drift off with my conscience clear.

And it pays to rest well. Soon after you wake – to the smell of Bolaven coffee and the accelerating whine of people zipping off for breakfast – the Explorer tempts you into further high jinks. There are trekking routes, of course, several of them heading to nearby beauty spots, and if that’s too pedestrian, a via ferrata – a vertical climb of iron pegs and hand-grips, an idea imported from Italy’s Dolomites – ensures that the journey up to the plateau is as heroic as the route down.

But I already know where I’m heading this morning: a wooden platform, 20 minutes out of camp, where another steel wire offers the longest flight path of all. For when a zipline runs between two A-frames in an adventure playground it is a moment’s fun. When it runs for 450m across a jungle ravine, through wisps of mist and splayed thickets of bamboo, past oceans of green and distant waterfalls, it transports you into the realms of the magically surreal. This time when I clip back on, there is no hesitation.

Privacy Overview

Privacy Policy

Introduction to Privacy Policy for Southern-Laos.com website

This policy covers the processing of personal data by [Southern-Laos], whose registered address is [ address ], and its associated group companies (“Southern-Laos, “we” or “us”). Southern-Laos is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information whilst striving to provide the very best user experience. We want our websites to be safe and enjoyable for everyone.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and related laws, we have a legal duty to protect the personal information we collect from you. GDPR says that ‘personal data’ is any information relating to a living individual who can be identified, either directly or indirectly, from that information. This could include your name, email address, postal address or telephone number, or information collected online and used to identify you.

On top, Southern-Laos is willing to strictly follow the Lao authorities that enacted the Electronic Data Protection Law of 12 May 2017.

As Data Controller we are responsible for, and control, the processing of your personal data for the purposes of Future’s services.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any comments, concerns or questions, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, you can contact our DPO.

We encourage you to read this policy in full but please click on the links below for a shortcut to the following sections:

1. Contact details

2. What data do we collect and how do we use it?

Information you provide to us

When you participate in, access, purchase or sign up to any of our services, activities or online content, such as subscription to the professional area, possibly newsletters, we receive personal information about you which we use to provide these services. This may consist of data such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, your sector of activity, or the company you are working for. You will be able to select how we use your information for marketing purposes and you can update your marketing preferences at any time.

Ordering a product or service from us

If you order a product or service from us, you will need to provide certain personal details, including payment information, so the order can be fulfilled.

Attending an event

If you attend one of our events, awards or conferences we may receive personal information about you, including your name and contact details and any dietary and accessibility requirements.

Content you share with us

When you choose to share comments, photos, videos and other content with, us we may receive personal information about you.

Some of our websites contain links to products and services offered by third party websites. If you click on those links we will use data collected about your activity on our site to direct you to the third party site. We and the third party may collect data to show us that you have clicked on the link and whether you purchased any products and services. We may receive a commission from the third party if you link to their site from Southern-Laos website and purchase goods and services from them.

Email communications

We keep a record of what communications you have selected to receive or not to receive. If you would like to opt out of receiving such emails you can unsubscribe at any time or contact our DPO at DPO@southern-laos.com

Information from other sources

We may receive information about you from other sources (for example, missing information about your postal or email addresses) and add it to the personal information we hold about you. We may also receive data from other sources, such as our business partners, and social media platforms.

3. What lawful bases do we rely on for processing?

In order to process your personal data, we must have a lawful reason for doing so. GDPR sets out six lawful bases under which organisations can collect, use and store personal data. We rely on three of the lawful bases:

Consent
In some instances we rely on your specific consent to process your personal information. This is where you have actively agreed and ‘opted-in’, for example to receive marketing communications from us, and you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Compliance with laws
We may have to process and share your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligations, or to protect our rights or the rights of others. For example, we are required to collect certain information from you when processing your subscription payment for tax or financial reporting reasons.

Legitimate interests
In some situations we rely on our legitimate business interests in order to collect and use your personal data. In these situations, we have conducted a balancing test to carefully consider the impact of the processing on your interests, rights and freedoms. We will only undertake the processing if we are satisfied there is no negative impact on you. We rely on Legitimate Interests for the following activities:

sending marketing communications related to the products and services of carefully selected companies in a business-to-business context;

managing suppression and unsubscribe requests;

researching publicly available business contact details;

managing certain aspects of our events;

analysing the use of our products and services;

using analytics to identify usage trends and determining the effectiveness of campaigns;

dealing with queries and complaints;

If you object to our reliance on Legitimate Interests for any purpose please contact our DPO.

4. Who may we share your data with?

Agents
We use third parties to perform certain functions on our behalf including fulfilling orders, sending emails, organising and managing events, running competitions and promotions, conducting surveys or polls, removing repetitive information from customer lists, comment hosting, website analysis, data analysis (and processing credit card payments in the future). They will have access to your personal information if necessary to perform their function but they cannot use it or disclose it for any other purpose, unless you have specifically given them consent to do so.

Aggregate information
We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information, such as demographics and website usage statistics, with advertisers, sponsors and other organisations.

Option to receive marketing information from associated third parties
Throughout the website you may be given the opportunity to receive marketing information which may be of interest to you from associated third parties. Only if you elect to receive such information, will we share your personal information with our associated third parties and they are only permitted by us to use it for the purpose of providing you with the marketing information you have requested. The use of your personal information by such third parties will be subject to their own privacy policy and practices. We are not responsible for the privacy policy or practices of any such third party. If you do not want to receive marketing information from associated companies you can notify us of this as part of the registration process. You can stop receiving this information at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions on the correspondence you receive, by amending your marketing preferences, or by emailing our DPO at DPO@southern-laos.com giving your email address and details of the information you no longer wish to receive.

Products or services offered in partnership with third parties
Certain products or services available through this website may be provided to you in partnership with a third party. That third party may require you to disclose personal information to them in order to receive such products or services. If you request a product or service offered in partnership with a third party, the identity of the third party will be disclosed to you and your personal information will be transferred to that third party. The use of your personal information by that third party is subject to its privacy policy and practices and we are not responsible for this.

Group Companies
We only share your personal information with our group companies if you have elected to receive marketing information from them which may be of interest to you. They are only permitted by us to use it for the purpose of providing you with the marketing information you have requested. If you do not want to receive marketing information from our group companies you can notify us and you can stop receiving this information at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions on the correspondence you receive or by emailing our DPO at DPO@southern-laos.com, giving your email address and details of the information you no longer wish to receive.

Third-Party Ad Serving and Audience and Traffic Measurement Services

We may use a third-party network advertiser to serve the advertisements on this website or we may use an audience or traffic measurement service to analyse the traffic on this website. Network advertisers are third parties that display advertisements based on your visits to this website and other websites you have visited. Third-party ad serving enables us to target advertisements to you for products or websites you might be interested in. Audience and traffic measurement services allow us to collect traffic and behavioural information from the website by monitoring anonymous visitor activity. This website’s advertisers, sponsors and/or traffic measurement services may themselves set and access their own cookies on your computer if you choose to have your cookies enabled in your browser. Please see What data is collected on our websites? [chapter 5] and our Cookies Policy for further details and information on opting out.

Auditing organisations
We may share your personal data with a third-party auditing organisation. This is so they can verify aggregated statistics about circulation and usage of our products, or review our policies, processes and procedures for compliance with relevant standards.

5. What data is collected on our websites?

‘Cookies’ are small data files which are sent to your computer, mobile phone or other device so that the website can remember information about your browsing activity. We use cookies on our websites for a variety of purposes:

Information storage and access
The storage of information, or access to information that is already stored, on your device such as advertising identifiers, device identifiers, cookies, and similar technologies.

Content selection, delivery, reporting
The collection of information, and combination with previously collected information, to select and deliver content for you, and to measure the delivery and effectiveness of such content. This includes using previously collected information about your interests to select content, processing data about what content was shown, how often or how long it was shown, when and where it was shown, and whether you took any action related to the content, including for example clicking on content. This does not include personalisation, which is the collection and processing of information about your use of this service to subsequently personalise content and/or advertising for you in other contexts, such as websites or apps, over time.

Measurement
The collection of information about your use of the content, and combination with previously collected information, used to measure, understand, and report on your usage of the service. This does not include personalisation, the collection of information about your use of this service to subsequently personalise content and/or advertising for you in other contexts, i.e. on other service, such as websites or apps, over time.

Ad selection, delivery, reporting

The collection of information, and combination with previously collected information, to select and deliver advertisements for you, and to measure the delivery and effectiveness of such advertisements. This includes using previously collected information about your interests to select ads, processing data about what advertisements were shown, how often they were shown, when and where they were shown, and whether you took any action related to the advertisement, including for example clicking an ad or making a purchase. This does not include personalisation, which is the collection and processing of information about your use of this service to subsequently personalise advertising and/or content for you in other contexts, such as websites or apps, over time.

6. Links to other websites

Our websites may include links to third party websites, plug-ins and applications (such as Booking.com). Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and, when you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit. We may monetise some of these links through the use of third party affiliate programmes. Notwithstanding such affiliate programmes, we are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these websites or for third party advertisers, nor for the way in which they use information they collect about you.

7. Storage and retention of data

Your information is collected and stored on our secure systems, mainly based in [ Vientiane / Pakse ] and in Paris, in OVH secure server. Where we use OVH third party service providers to store data, we have appropriate agreements in place to ensure that your personal data is protected.

We hold personal data for a variety of different purposes and the length of time we keep your data will vary depending on the services or products we are providing. We will only keep your data for a reasonable period of time, which is based on the purpose for which we are using your data. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, we will securely delete that data or anonymise your information (so that we, or anyone else, can no longer tell that data relates to you) unless we are required to retain the data longer for legal, tax or accounting reasons.

8. Security

We are committed to protecting the personal data we hold. In accordance with GDPR, we adopt appropriate technical and organisational measures to help prevent unauthorised access to your information and ensure data is held securely. We also require any third parties to whom we may transfer personal data to have appropriate security measures in place. We ask third parties to complete Data Security Questionnaires so we can be sure they are a safe place for your data.

9. Protecting children’s privacy

Our products and services are for a general audience and not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of sixteen or send any marketing communications to children.

10. Your rights

You have the right to request:

Access to the personal data we hold about you.

The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.

The erasure of your personal data.

That we stop using your personal data for direct marketing if you object to it.

That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.

The right to request a transfer of your data to another service provider.

Your right to withdraw consent
Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

Where we rely on our legitimate interest
In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Direct marketing
You have the right to stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing activity through all channels, or selected channels. We must always comply with your request. Remember, you can always stop direct marketing messages by clicking on an unsubscribe link in any of our emails or getting in touch with us.

Exercising your rights
If you wish to exercise any of your rights please contact the Data Protection Officer:
By post: [address ] ; or
By email: DPO@southern-laos.com

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. If this is case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

No fee usually required
You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the rights), however, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. If we choose not to action your request we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

Information Commissioner’s Office
If you feel you need to, you also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Lao officials.

11. Policy changes

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time, so we encourage you to check it periodically. If we make material changes we will endeavour to provide you with appropriate notice before such changes take effect.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Cookie Policy (full)

This policy covers the use of cookies by Southern-Laos.com’ websites, whose registered address is [ address ], and its associated group companies (“Southern-Laos.com”, “we” or “us”). Southern-Laos.com is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information whilst striving to provide the very best user experience. We want our websites to be safe and enjoyable for everyone.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and related laws, we have a legal duty to protect the personal information we collect from you. GDPR says that ‘personal data’ is any information relating to a living individual who can be identified, either directly or indirectly, from that information. This could include your name, email address, postal address or telephone number, or information collected online and used to identify you.

On top, Southern-Laos.com is willing to strictly follow the Lao authorities that enacted the Electronic Data Protection Law of 12 May 2017.
References to “the Website” mean www.southern-laos.com (including any relevant sub-domains unless this Cookies Policy is expressly excluded from their own terms and conditions).
By accessing the Website, you agree that this Cookies Policy will apply whenever you access the Website on any device.
We encourage you to read this policy in full but please click on the links below for a shortcut to the following sections:

1. What are cookies?

Like most other websites, we use cookies to help provide you with the best possible browsing experience.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on to your computer or mobile device when you first visit a website or page. It may then be stored on your computer’s hard drive and can be accessed by our web server. They are used for a number of reasons, such as remembering whether you have visited the site before, so that you can remain logged in. They contain information about the use of your computing device but it is important to clarify that cookies do not collect any personal data stored on your hard drive or computer.
For more information on how to control your cookie settings and browser settings, or how to delete cookies on your hard drive, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

2. How We Use Cookies

We use cookies on our websites for a variety of reasons which you can learn about below. The cookies we use do not store personally identifiable information nor can they harm your computer. We want our website to be informative, personal, and as user friendly as possible and cookies help us to achieve that goal. For example, to memorize you after subscription, to show you polls you didn’t answered yet, to create a list of favourite, etc.
By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies and other technologies as set out in this policy. We appreciate some users may like more individual control over their visit to our website and can adjust their settings accordingly. You can read all about this in the section below “How to control and delete cookies”. If you do not agree to such use, please refrain from using the website.
We use two analytics packages in order to constantly improve your browsing experience on our websites.
Trusted partners like Google Analytics may place cookies on your machine. Please read their privacy policies to ensure that you’re comfortable with the manner in which they use cookies (Google Analytics).
Our Websites have also several plugins that might generate cookies (such as the Facebook widget, Jetpack, Livechat) we don’t have any access, or control. By accepting our cookie policy, you might receive cookies without our control but our acceptation in term to offer you more information, services, or functionalities.

3. Social Media & e-Booking Third Party Cookies?

To enrich our website content, sometimes we may embed video content from other social media websites such as YouTube or Facebook. As a result, when you visit a page with content embedded, you may be presented with cookies from these websites. Southern-Laos.com has no control or liability over these cookies set, so you should check the relevant third party’s cookie policy for more information.
We also offer a Social Media’s widgets on some of our web pages, where content can be shared easily on the following sites Facebook or Instagram, or Online Booking Systems such as Booking.com or Agoda.com. These sites may set a cookie when you are logged into their service. Southern-Laos.com has no control or liability over these cookies set, so you should check the relevant third party’s cookie policy for more information.

4. How to Control and Delete Cookies?

Southern-Laos.com will never use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. However, should you choose to disable, reject or block our cookies, some parts of our websites will not function fully, or in some cases, our website will not be accessible at all.